


Dark Wonderland

by EAI



Series: A Sigh Escapes From Heaven [2]
Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Gaslamp Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Steampunk, Banter, Brotherhood, Dark Fantasy, Dark Magic, Disabled Character, Eating Disorders, Elemental Magic, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Romance, Family Dynamics, Family Feels, Filial Piety, Forgiveness, Found Family, Gore, Heavily Inspired by American McGee's Alice and Madness Returns, Loyalty, M/M, Memory Dissociation, Mental Health Issues, Most Chapters Are Rated T to M for Violence, Non-Linear Flashback Memories, Parent-Child Relationship, Protective Siblings, Rating May Change, Reincarnation, Self-Sacrifice, Slow Burn, Spirit Animals, Starvation, Survival Horror, Survivor Guilt, War, Whump, Winter, also Lewis Carroll's Alice Adventures in Wonderland, theterrorbigbang2020 late entry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:49:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28085721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EAI/pseuds/EAI
Summary: Spring of 1881 – Thomas Jopson, burning with childlike curiosity, pursued a strange rabbit-man into the forest and down the rabbit-hole. He arrived to an alleged paradise damned by winter and curses, as he was plagued by the wrecking memories of a dead Prince who bore his face.♚Check outDark Wonderland'spromotional video!@Terror Big Bang 2020 Late Entry
Relationships: Lt George Hodgson & Lt John Irving & Lt Edward Little, Lt George Hodgson & Thomas Jopson, Lt John Irving & Thomas Jopson, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Sgt Solomon Tozer/Robert Jopson, Thomas Jopson & Neptune, Thomas Jopson & Robert Jopson, Thomas Jopson & Sgt Solomon Tozer, Thomas Jopson/Lt Edward Little
Series: A Sigh Escapes From Heaven [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2057562
Kudos: 8





	1. Notes and Credits

♚

♥

The Terror: Dark Wonderland

_Notes and Credits_

♥

♚

  * I signed up for a minimum 10,000 challenge, planned to build a simple story but my traitorous brain/heart/liver/pancreas/kidneys/whatnot convinced me to write a full, novel-length story in the span of roughly seven to eight months while juggling university and personal issues. Where everyone had their quarantine dilemma, my professors gave me essays and tests to complete and submit online, so I had little to no time to finish this during the specified time given by the mods. *dead*   
  
The reason why this entry was not under the collection because, heh, it was posted late and I wanted to let it go. My mind was on this for almost a year and I needed to move on.   
  
Supposedly, this was due on the 22nd of August (GODDAMN), but I requested for an extension because, i) I lost my Chapters 34 and 36 (and almost half of my ending but I had a backup for that) during editing and it was a rough/tough process getting and writing them all over again, ii) insecurities because of my overwhelming anxieties, iii) I got demotivated (quite a lot), and iv) real world problems just constantly smacked me in the face. I'm not quite sure I've gotten through all of them yet but there's no point in wallowing and not taking care of myself. Is it self-destructive to do that or am I just healing myself?  
  
Anyway, all and all, I just want to say a big THANK YOU to the moderators for everything! ♥  
  

  * The original title for this work of fiction was **_Down, Down into the Dark Wonderland_** but my wonderful artist partner (vikkicomics/[THHuxley](https://archiveofourown.org/users/THHuxley)) and I decided it was too mouthful so we demoted/reduced it to **_Dark Wonderland_**. It's simple and self-explanatory, you know what to expect from the title itself. It's fucking dark and crazy, with a cherry on top ♥  
  

  * I really mean it. My JopLittle version of _Alice's Adventures in Wonderland_ and _the Looking Glass Wars_ takes a very dark and downward turn quite a number of times, some of them are detailed, most of them are implied. All thanks to _American McGee's Alice_ and _Alice: Madness Returns,_ because these two games are incredibly disturbing. But I'll give you a brief spoiler, it'll end on a happy note but with a lot of angst. Maybe. Do take note of the tags and if those turn you off, you're very much welcome to read something else.   
  
Below is the world map I made for my version of Wonderland, apologies in advance if it's too crowded. There's only so much I can do with limited items on Inkarnate. Open the image on a new tab, and zoom in!  
  
  
  
  
  

  * There are two (somewhat) original characters that played huge roles in this work, and I assume you've already been spoiled by the two unknown (who da fuq are they?) characters tagged above. One is AMC _the Terror_ 's canon character (?) though only mentioned as an anonymous/nameless little brother, so I took the liberty to expound this mysterious person. The other is heavily based on _Transformers: the Last Knight_ 's King Arthur Pendragon because I adore that lore and Liam Garrigan who played him. I needed a concrete reason for my plot so he (an OC) was carved out of my mind.   
  
Extras in the _**Dark Wonderland**_ are extra characters from the show/book/real-people, borrowed from [**here**](http://www.ric.edu/faculty/rpotter/muster.html).   
  
Below are their visual references, you may want to come back to these. Also click [**here** ](https://captain-eaifreiheit.tumblr.com/post/637557622507274240/i-love-him-and-his-voice)to listen to Robert Jopson's voice, if you want a thorough audio-visualization (or you can just google Jack Huston, and stare into his hazel eyes):  
  
  
  
~~  
  
~~
  * I completed this entry weeks ago, but there are still some plot-holes and scenes that I am not satisfied with. So please allow me to tweak on them.   
  

  * I'll have to think if this work deserves an E rating, but for now, it'll stay with M first for mild/extreme gore and violence and whatnot. I'm not too keen on writing multiple sex scenes in stories I create, so if I do happen to write it, it may be a bit vanilla and awkward. Or maybe it'll end with fade-to-black. Terribly sorry in advance, but I'll put up a warning when we finally get to it.   
  

  * I'll include content warnings on the opening-notes of chapters I deem necessary. And be warned though, I do not have a beta and because English is my second language, do expect a lot of grammatical errors and repetitions.   
  
Also, whenever you spot [_sample_ -music](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mL-65tD3LC8&ab_channel=R3MusicBox), click on them and listen while you read.  
  

  * With that said, thank you to the Big Bang moderators again for helping me and my teammate, for being such good sports, and also for allowing me this embarrassing month-long extension. Vikki, I'm glad I was partnered with you. You made the cover art so perfectly, me cry at all your drafts and finished art since late July.  
  

  * Happy belated 39th birthday to Liam Garrigan, happy belated birthday to me and happy 38th birthday to Matthew McNulty! Oh, and it's almost time for Christmas! Woot, woot! 



I love you ♥ Thank you for taking the time to read this. Hope you all are safe and healthy. Wash your hands, wear your mask when you go out. Bundle yourself up and keep yourself warm. Make yourself a cup of tea or buy a venti from the nearest Starbucks. Eat some muffins, those are delicious. Love and take care of yourself. 

And do enjoy!

Sincerely,

Len.

♥

♚


	2. In a Cage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **cw** : mild detail of war injuries and mild social anxiety; implied cleithrophobia (fear of being buried), child abuse and neglect, emotional and verbal abuse, implied eating disorder, class division. 
> 
> it was paraphrased but a quote from the free-verse poem was heavily borrowed from William Blake's Earth Answer. it's a beautiful poem, go and have a quick read. cover art drawn by the lovely [vikkicomics](https://vikkicomics.tumblr.com/)! go check her out!

♚

**PART I: Down, Down He Falls**

♥

A [denouement](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wh7mAnnn_bA&ab_channel=AhmadRehan) from an unknown tale which told of a father’s ultimate sacrifice: 

> _“—someday soon, I will plant periwinkle irises right here, by the pond. The flower bears a similar shade to the sky when the sun rises and sets, you see? A beautiful transition, the dawn and dusk. Or perhaps, a crowd of irises with the color of the brightest blue? Like your eyes,” he said oh so softly to his little listener. “I think you will love it.”_
> 
> _In the cradle of his arms, his firstborn peered up at him, sleepy and curious at the new strange world after life in the quiet womb. Breathing, cooing in reply. His son’s cheeks were like blooming roses, lips pouty and skin as fair as his dear wife. It saddened him still whenever his eyes wandered to his son’s little heaving chest – the sunburst mark that would linger as a painful reminder, a warning. It hadn’t been that long ago that he lost his heir. Felt and cried when his son gasped his last, and his heart stopped beating._
> 
> _He truly believed he did it out of grief._
> 
> _Out of love._
> 
> _But it was simply selfish of him to commit such a great sin. And now he would subject his own flesh and blood to a life full of tragedies and miseries._
> 
> _“Every night I will pray, beg to whatever gods that will listen to this poor, poor man… to keep you safe from harm. So you will not cower in fear of the darkness, of the future that will ruin you. You deserve more than this, my son.”_
> 
> _His thumb caressed his son’s plump cheek, bright blues finally closing, surrendering to sleep._
> 
> _Such an innocent little child._
> 
> _“And so, I will kiss this hand that I will hold for however long,” he leaned down, lips against the babe’s soft knuckles. “And show you nothing but my love.”_
> 
> _The hourglass had begun its drop just as the sun disappeared from the horizon, counting each breath taken by each little heartbeat._
> 
> _“Forgive me… forgive me,” he wept._
> 
> _How he wished he would see his son grow. How he wished he could say all the things that should be said._
> 
> _But he was just a father, who wanted his son to live. Longer than him if he must._
> 
> _Damn the conditions? If he were a braver a man and this babe was not his own, perhaps he would damn everything. This world included._
> 
> _Why did it have to be kept a secret?_

🂾

He couldn’t temper and avoid the burgeoning guesses and fears in his head as he stayed wide awake, albeit exhausted, since he first laid his head down to rest last night. With a pounding headache, the prospect of facing yet another difficult day was daunting. The sun had risen bright and sanguine, its rays filtered in between the gaps from the curtains, painting uneven patterns on the carpet and the birds, chirping sweetly – a _mocking_ melody – outside. But today’s affair and the blasted, crawling pain shooting up his left leg, constantly reminding him of his recent infirmities, all his failures as a human, a man and a son, ruing out his already wilting energy. Both had been the primary subjects of his despair and qualms for the past two weeks.

Hearing a quick rap on the door, Robert – his younger brother, with a full cheer glued to his face – swept in with a pitcher, a bowl and rolls of fresh bandages.

The usual morning materials Thomas required as of late.

“Rise and shine, old boy! Today is another day of mental dedication, physical recovery—“

 _No, agony and torment_ , he thought his correction was hilarious.

“—and progress,” Robert placed the items on the washstand before he moved to draw open the curtains and windows to welcome the fresh air of the day. Thomas tugged his blanket over his head at the sudden glare of light, muffling his pitiful groan. “Do you remember those lovely soaps I ordered last week? They’ve just arrived and the packages are marvelous! Even Mother is green with envy—wait. It might have been disgust, who knows? Why in the world should I bother asking her? Do you want to try the lime first? That one smells particularly refreshing.”

Closing his eyes, Thomas kept track of his brother’s retreating footsteps, walking out and in to the adjoining bathroom to prepare the morning routine they adopted recently as he caught the squeak of the faucet and water drumming into the tub.

“And while Mister Cobbs is ironing out your uniform and polishing your boots, let us take a good washing now, shall we?”

Thomas couldn’t force himself to reply. Instead, he remained hidden and burrowed under his covers. Perhaps, if he stayed this way, time would run a lot faster. He curled into himself more when he felt Robert sitting tentatively on the edge of his bed, placing a hand on Thomas’ shoulder.

“Another terror?”

What he saw in his nightmares hadn’t been anything new nor twisted, but the recurring images of blazing fire, blood and corpses of men he trained and was familiar with still left him rattled for days on end. And coupled with a long list of insecurities and loneliness he harbored for years, many might ask him how in the world he managed to survive after all this time.

Thomas didn’t have the answer to that yet.

Which was why, he was hesitant to attend today’s _funeral_.

Because he was supposed to be the only one brought home in a casket.

“Will they scorn me, I wonder?” he croaked. “Their parents, their families trusted me to get them out safely, or at least... let their sons die a painless death. I couldn’t even give them that.”

Robert engulfed him in warmth, arms protective around his curled, battered body. And to his ear, he whispered, “You couldn’t have known what would happen, and you were there too. Even if they do scorn at you, remember you are never at fault and they know it. You didn’t give out the orders. They always need someone to blame, can’t seem to understand the reality of the place you yourself barely escaped from.”

His hand found Robert’s a moment later, clutching tightly as he wept into his pillow, at war with his own thoughts.

“Also, I’ll be accompanying you there, I refuse to leave you alone.”

Since Thomas was very young, he confessed he never once felt comfortable in his own skin – always restless as if a huge part of him was misplaced elsewhere, as if at one point, he was never meant to be alive. To mask this dull ache and discomfort, unwilling to be scrutinized by strangers, he constructed a persona in which he could easily wear among his peers and thought shamelessly that he could lie outright. He was astonishingly successful, he even fooled a clown of a doctor and his goons. Being the eldest and the apparent heir to Father’s thriving empire, he found it surprisingly painless as he kept up the ruse.

But Thomas Jopson then and now were two completely, different people.

His well-kept turmoil had run loose.

Perhaps – Father’s death had been the major catalyst to his current downfall, a slow progression of self-degradation as the years went by. Mother’s suddenly destructive, capricious behavior and secret fondness for expensive wines and opium, his crippling trauma from the war and arms full of burdens and expectations were the ones that finally destroyed his mask.

Mother said to him once upon a time, he had changed.

A drastic difference.

But he hadn’t. This was the real him, circumstances had worn him down.

A broken person questioning his entire existence.

And Robert, out of everyone else, was the only person who could see through him as clear as day from then to now. For two years, Robert stayed with him and they grew much closer than they were before. And for two weeks, Thomas wondered, why didn’t Robert ever feel repulsed by him?

His brother could have gone ahead and continued his apprenticeship with Doctor Stephen Stanley, went to Egypt and safely away from all the family problems. Instead, Robert dropped all of his carefully planned arrangements for Thomas, adamant that he would be the one to nurse his older brother back to health.

“Are you feeling somewhat better now?” there was a soft, patient smile pulling Robert’s lips. His fingers combing through Thomas’ hair, slow and in repeat, lulling him to a deserved calm.

How sad it actually was, what love he couldn’t get from Mother, he received it amply from his brother.

“Yes.”

“Ready?”

Wiping his tears with the back of his hand, Thomas took a deep breath and answered. “Yes.”

Robert offered him another smile before he drew him to sit upright on the edge of his bed, carefully planting both of his feet down to the carpeted floor. Agony overcame him just as quickly, especially at the rushing thought that he couldn’t feel any sensation on his left limb apart from the crushing pain. It took a lot of effort and willpower on Thomas’ part, as he forced himself not to cry again as his brother carried most of his weight to the bathroom, seating him on a stool by the half-full tub. What came next was another harrowing morning procedure: where the bandages had to be kept dry but replaced, avoid looking at the missing portions of his thigh and calf, and continue on pondering why the surgeons didn’t just amputate his limb, spare him of this misery. Robert inspected his other wounds, at the jagged, angry sutures that scattered all over his body – then rolled his sleeves and bathed him, in warm water, like some helpless, broken thing. It was humiliating, but he didn’t trust anyone seeing him so frail like a damned decrepit, not even his own valet, and his brother was the only one he tolerated in this house.

Thomas, cradled in his towels and shivering, traced his fingers down the birthmark on his chest when Robert quickly left to fetch his fresh bandages. Ugly and red sunburst, a permanent conflict to his pallor skin. It was such a peculiar mark placed directly above his beating heart, like a crater. Then he turned his attention to his palms, both damaged from an accident he couldn’t remember. Perhaps he did, but he couldn’t recall when or where.

He should consider himself fortunate his consciousness hid that memory from him. Or unfortunate, he was feeling masochistic as of late.

Robert babbled – one of his weird traits that Thomas found strangely adorable – about his plans to expand and invest a quarter of their father’s fortune somewhere to the east or southeast, ensuring a proper handling of their wealth, as he helped Thomas shave, changed his bandages, dressed him in his uniform, buckled his earned medals and fashioned his hair. His brother, a year younger and a complete opposite of himself, readily invested his time and effort as his only caretaker that nonetheless made Thomas somewhat upset.

And terribly sorry.

“What a moment to rejoice! I think I did wonderfully, please say you’re satisfied with me,” Robert pinched Thomas’ cheek, jumping away with a hearty snicker when Thomas slapped his hand away.

“I deeply appreciate it, Robbie, even though I hate the uniform,” he smiled lightly, sitting down on the armchair by the window with a groan before he toppled down. His lame leg could barely take his weight, and he already lamented at his loss.

“Oh, what to do, the event doesn’t call for ‘wear your jammies only’.”

“That would be entertaining, wouldn’t it?”

“At social parties, cricket and polo matches maybe. But not funerals,” Robert replied, packing up his brought tray with used bandages to be disposed and burned before he spun his heels to him. “I shall go and get myself ready. Do you prefer to stay here or at the library as you wait?”

“I’ll wait here for you,” catching the gloves his brother tossed at him. He slipped the fabric over his fingers, covering both of his hands, hiding the most obvious of his imperfections. “I haven’t the slightest mood to see Mother so early in the morning.”

Robert pinched his cheek again and this time, Thomas allowed it. It didn’t hurt, never, this was merely a habit his brother adopted as a show of his affection. His care. They were wayward for such a long time before, let them revel in this newly formed bond. “I’ll see you in a moment, don’t go bananas without me.”

Left to his own thoughts, and exhausted from yet another sleepless night, Thomas’ eyes wandered down to his lame leg. Angular, a pitiful limb. It had been thirteen weeks since Laing’s Nek, seven weeks since that terrible fever that nearly killed him, three weeks since he arrived home – still sickly, and permanently disabled. Two weeks since Robert decided to care for him, and a week since the remains of his fallen men were recovered from the battlefield.

Mother was impartial, disgusted even, at his broken sight. And that unsympathetic look she gave him was nonetheless more painful than the rest of his wounds.

 _You’ve gone and done it_ , she spat at him. _Now, you’re a deadweight to this family._

Oh, how he prayed he was not found at Laing’s Nek and left to rot instead, just so he could escape this nightmare of a mother.

Thomas craved for the day when he could finally feel absolutely nothing, empty like a husk and numb to his bones. Emotions were dangerous, he decided and without them, he could never get hurt. But Robert chided him and said, that destined day would turn him cruel – especially to himself and the one who understood him the most. Who would want to understand what he went through? His brother thought he was just as cruel before, why should the day be any different?

Not long after, Robert entered his room with his usual smile, now dressed in a presentable dark suit, with their late grandfather’s brass and walnut cane in his hands. “I think it is wise that you use this instead of the wheelchair.”

Thomas silently agreed, attempting to save however much lingering pride that was left, as he rose to his feet, the brass handle gripped in his right. At twenty-seven, he walked like an old man. Steeling themselves for the foreseeable headaches, they went down to the dining room together where Mother was already seated, eating her breakfast as she read today’s papers with a full glass of wine by her plate.

Filling out the awkward silence while the footmen prepared their morning meal, and Thomas breaking etiquette by sitting next to his brother instead, leaving the head seat empty, Robert began listing out his further plans for the housing scheme the three of them agreed. “We do need to start on the repairs for some of the houses, the work may take quite a long while so it’s best that we start now. Preferably, before winter.”

Mother hummed an appreciative noise, “Carpenters from the village—“

Dropping a cube of sugar into his morning tea, wondering idly if he should drop another cube or two to sweeten the dull taste of the day, Thomas successfully tuned out the discussion when their butler approached him with a letter.

“For you, sir.”

“Thank you,” he accepted his mail, and frowned at the familiar and delicate writing of his name at the front as he proceeded to tore open the seal and read what was written.

> _Dear Thomas—  
>   
> _ _I am writing this to you on behest of myself to personally invite you to my engagement dinner this Sunday. We parted poorly before you were sent out to fight the war, and I feel we haven’t yet settled this conflict between us. I am neither angry nor ashamed of you, but will you do this one last favor for me, and help me calm this unease before I am to be married off to Daniel Cotton.  
>   
> _ _Until now, I still crave for your company. Hence this letter. Your friendship, at the very least, no matter how unorthodox that will be to my parents’ eyes. Or anyone’s.  
>   
> _ _It will be nice of you to come.  
>   
> _ _With all my love,_

Elizabeth Montgomery; his childhood friend, his old flame, his former fiancée. All of the above.

“Who is that from?” his mother asked.

“Elizabeth,” Thomas replied quietly, setting the letter aside to tuck in on his hearty breakfast which the footman had placed before him. He noted a good portion of proteins on his plate, Robert must have told the servants about his deteriorating weight. 

“Oh, how lovely! Why didn’t you tell me you’re still writing to her?”

“I don’t,” he dug into his scrambled eggs and swore his curt answer caused his brother to cringe.

“Well, what does Ellie want from you?”

Thomas paused, he loathed that tone.

“ _Elizabeth_ , she’s not Ellie anymore,” he corrected her, restraining his annoyance. There was enough headache for the day, but it seemed like he was about to lose his appetite really soon too. “She’s engaged to Daniel Cotton now, and she’s inviting us to her engagement dinner on Sunday.”

“Daniel Cotton?”

“He’s a banker,” Robert explained instead, sipping on his tea.

“Do you know him, Robbie?”

“He owns one of the top banks in London, invested on a few of Doctor Stanley’s researches. Nice chap, a handsome fellow with a charming smile. And a chatterbox, like me.”

“Oh, what is a banker to an oil magnate?” their mother chuckled, shaking her head, swirling her morning wine. “Ellie, the poor girl. She shouldn’t have lowered her standards to common men like Daniel Cotton. Wrangle her back, Thomas, she needs to be with this family.”

Thomas dropped his fork, clattering on his plate. She said it so nonchalantly that he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“Pardon?”

“There are grounds for divorce after a week of marriage, do you know? Also, Ellie’s father is a perfect business partner for us if we are to proceed with Robbie’s overseas project. Perfect solution, advantages to both families. Ellie will not have to go through that marriage ordeal anymore.”

Thomas jerked out of his chair, leaving the table, and hobbled out of the room. All thoughts of breakfast forgotten, appetite lost. Why in the world should he beg to pretend to be so in love once more to a girl who had been nothing but sweet to him? The girl who clearly had moved on from him? Almost, perhaps. He broke her heart, he made her cry. Elizabeth deserved to be with someone else, and Thomas would cheer for her.

“Tommy.”

Robert held his elbow, his other hand tilting his head up, concern furrowing his eyebrows. Thomas only realized that he had collapsed in the hallway, not too far from the dining room.

“I’m all right,” his voice quivered, as he breathed in and out – a calming piece he learned from their father, to employ whenever he felt overwhelmed.

“Shall we go back? Finish your breakfast?”

That would mean staring at their mother’s pompous smile again.

“No,” he shook his head. “Can we go instead?”

“Of course.”

🂾

The funeral procession went on like a damned _jubilee_ , with flares and a warring band, honoring the gentry officers who were killed in the war, bidding farewells to their protectors who pledged to the Queen and country. Yet on the other end of the march, an absolute paradoxical reality to the one Thomas was summoned to, were the funerals for paupers.

Soldiers of the working class families who died from the same war. 

Parents, widowed wives and children dressed in their borrowed mourning garbs, on the wagons behind them were stacks of bare coffins where most would go without headstones. Graves without names, but Thomas would remember the dead all the same.

He stood with the other officers, held upright by Robert’s arm secured around his waist and a hand on his elbow. Thomas averted his eyes from the coffins, suppressing the crawling fear that haunted his mind the best he could. He could have sworn he heard the dead wailing, begging to be let out. They were being buried alive, weren’t they? He still refused to look when the coffins were finally lowered, clumps of dirt beating against their wooden lids, entombing them into their eternal rests. When the Father sang his farewells, Thomas drew his eyes closed to the cries of those who lost their loved ones.

If he couldn’t be the only casualty, why couldn’t he be among his men whom he failed to protect?

Robert, who had been standing vigil by his side, let out a hiss of a curse. Thomas rose his gaze up to him when Robert’s hand clenched on his elbow a little tighter, intending to ask what was wrong when one of the grieving mothers whacked him across his face.

“—it’s your fault my son’s gone!” she bawled, struggling as she was held back by her family, agitated. “It’s your fault! You monster! Give him back! Give me back my David! He was just a boy…! How dare you!”

Robert shielded him from any more of the woman’s hits, cradled against his chest, pushing her away before he veered them off from the crowd. In the morbid silence by a mausoleum, he gently helped him to alleviate the broiling panic pelting against his chest.

“Tommy, look at me. We’ve been through this before,” Robert said quietly, hands on Thomas’ cheeks, anchoring him. “Take deep breaths, in and out. Slowly, take your time.”

“R-Robbie…! I can’t—” his hands clamped on his brother’s shoulder and the side of his neck, choking out as he sobbed. It felt as if the world was toppling upside down, his heart stopping, blades clawing at his chest. Invisible noose coiling tight around his neck. Lungs ripped out from his nose.

“It’s all right, it’s all right. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere, do you hear me? So take deep breaths. Count to ten with me. One… two, three.”

Thomas wept, and he was so tired of crying. Swallowing in as much air as he could. He counted, and when he couldn’t, he stopped and counted again. His brother was staying strong for him, but he too could see the fear absolutely clear in Robert’s eyes.

“I’m here.”

His brother was always the better one between them, and he was taking advantage of him.

“I’m here.”

_I’m here._

Those two words echoed in his head as Robert drove them back to the manor. For the sake of Thomas’ dwindling sanity and Robert’s boredom, they left the cemetery quickly without informing anyone else. Why should they keep up the pretense? Thomas was forced to retire, discharged from the military which was effective immediately once it was established that he was deemed unfit and disabled to continue his service. Reclining on his seat, he felt somewhat sedated now, though drained, prickling numbness still lingered at the tips of his fingers.

He took a peek at Robert on the driver’s seat, a comforting presence beside him despite the confined space in a fast moving transport, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. He carried so much responsibilities now that Thomas felt disappointed in himself.

“I’m sorry.”

“Hmm? For what?”

“For everything.”

Robert responded him with a smile, knocking his fingers at Thomas’ chest. “Tell me you’re sorry on the day when you think you’re ready enough to stand on your own. I don’t need it now. I’m only doing what is expected of me, as your younger brother.”

“That’s just it. You’re my younger brother.”

Sighing, he asked, “What did I do now?”

“You should have gone to Egypt, and India while you’re at it. I hear spices are medicinal, you could have been a pioneer,” he mumbled, turning to the view outside his window. The trees blurred into an anarchic spread of greens.

“Then who is going to take care of you? Mother? Tommy, accept it. I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere. You’re stuck with me now.”

After a beat of silence, Thomas started again. “Do you plan to mother me to death?”

“Do you want me to?”

“I asked you a question first.”

“Mine’s an answer,” his brother countered, a grin on his lips. “Well, do you?”

Thomas only smiled in reply, listening to Robert, appeased, humming a song as they went.

Their old butler and housekeeper welcomed them once they arrived home, and judging by the slight cringe crossing their faces at the squawks of laughter coming from upstairs, they quickly realized that their mother’s bosom friends were visiting – the usual band of awful women their mother scrounged from some ambiguous parties. They scaled down the stairs, pausing when they saw him, raising their painted eyebrows, wine-colored lips twisting, sneering.

“I see you’re upright now, Thomas. Do grip your walking stick tightly, darling, we don’t want you to fall!”

“It’s nice of you to allow your brother to manage William’s properties. Such a waste if you are to deal with them. We simply do not trust an escapee from the asylum!”

“Simon is in the army now, they say he’ll be a Captain soon!”

“What a fool you were to mingle yourself with those rats. Now, look at you, standing one leg short. If any more, you will be without your legs!”

“Men from the Navy aren’t meant to be on land, my sons told me these good puns about fishes!”

Thomas summoned a smile, wide enough for them, bringing his cane to the front, leaning on it as he looked at them. “Then perhaps you should return home, my unpleasant sight must probably shock you to death. Teach yourself some moral decency, especially when you’re merely visitors in my house, and groom your sons to be the perfect example of great Victorian gentlemen. Possibly without lame legs, we wouldn’t want them to bawl and crawl at you like floating turds now, would we?”

Robert muffled a snicker behind him.

“Oh, do tell dear old Simon to be extremely careful of wayward explosions and remind him not to wet his breeches again. He went through a lot of them, they were painfully embarrassing. You should also get a doctor for him, there must be something awfully wrong your beloved son.”

“What was wrong with him?” Robert piped in, helpful, adding salt to raw wounds.

Thomas contested as politely as he could, taking in the changing features of their mother’s friends. “He complained his kidneys hurt a few times. And his back and his legs. And I noticed this one little hint a few months ago. Despite the cold, his face was flushed and his tongue was yellow. I asked if he was fine, he replied to me a yes, but he walked so strangely I thought he was a crab. He lied to me.”

“Hmm, that could only mean one thing,” his brother mused, then snapped his fingers. “Overexertion of sexual activities? Golly, what a deviant!”

Thomas savored this small victory at their colored faces – a blend of fury, scandalized and sheer embarrassment. The butler and the housekeeper were both embarrassed and amused, a strange color forming on their otherwise pink cheeks. Mother, who stood behind her friends, looked disastrously furious.

“I bid you a good day, ladies,” he sent them, tipping his head slightly.

 _What a day_ , he thought as he retreated to Father’s pond hidden in the garden, collapsing on the stone bench just under the tree’s shade, just in time to witness a frog jumping from the water lily with a plop.

He waited until his heart calmed once more, before he allowed himself to acknowledge those few things that would never happen again. Thomas wished he could be just as jovial as the chirping birds, as complete as the swimming family of fish and as light as the swallowtail butterfly fluttering by him, disappearing into the shrubs – he thought them mocking at him now.

He unbuttoned his stifling uniform coat, and untucked his dress shirt when he heard footsteps crunching on the grass, slow and deliberate.

“I’ve held them back for you, you’re welcome,” Robert began, sliding his hands into his pockets. “Do you want me to leave?”

“You’ve pressing matters to attend to.”

“I can go fetch the housing plans from the office at the village square. I refuse to leave you alone with Mother. You’ll get bullied some more. Believe me, Tommy, you’ll not survive without me.”

Thomas pulled a smile, he believed him. He endured so much alone and was thankful his brother kept him sane, and _alive_. “How very considerate of you.”

Robert shared a conspiratorial grin of his own, “Either you want me to stay with you or not, be a turtle and let Mother hound you until I get back. Your choice.”

“Stay,” he answered, leaning back against the bench, letting the breeze cooling his skin.

Robert grunted as he sat on the grass by his legs, expensive clothing be damned. “I heard from Mister Cobbs that Sir John came by earlier.”

“Sir John? What did he want?”

His brother shrugged, stretching out his long legs. “He asked to see Mother, I didn’t realize he’s returned from New York this soon.”

“Maybe she wants you to marry too, and Sir John has found you a potential suitor over there.”

“Oh, that would be another nightmare!” 

🂾

An hour later found the brothers spending their noon at the library, with Robert occupying himself with the housing blueprints at his desk and Thomas, sans his uniform, playing the piano, the only displaced item in the manor. The one and only composition he could play perfectly was Liszt’s arrangement of Schubert’s _Ständchen_ , and he thought the piece was fitting as he mulled over his lost relationship with Elizabeth and her inviting him to her engagement dinner. He weighed his options; there would be a large crowd which he undoubtedly despised and Elizabeth’s father was a respected socialite whose pretentious opinions Thomas could never find himself agreeing with. His obvious disability would only heighten his insecurity, but then he thought, Elizabeth was probably right.

It was due time to apologize to her, and let her go. She would rise and be deservedly loved that way.

“Do you think I should go?” he asked, stopping mid-play. When Robert canted his head questioningly, he explained. “To the Montgomery’s. To Elizabeth’s engagement dinner this Sunday?”

“Oh,” turning the pages of his ledger, Robert said, “Remember, you’ll be seeing a lot of her strapping beau and her dear old father.”

“I know,” Thomas groused, rising from the bench to hop over to the closest couch. He lowered himself carefully before he made a conscious decision to slump to the side and hid his face into a throw pillow.

“May clear your head at least, tell her you’re terribly sorry for breaking her heart. Whether she forgives you or not, you’ve said your piece. You did leave her without stating your reasons, and she deserves some final honesty from you. Elizabeth is a kind girl,” Robert reasoned, putting down his pen. “The letter she sent you was personal, wasn’t it? Usually, women of our gentry will never do that. They’re very… fussy.”

“You’ll come along?”

“Why wouldn’t I? I’ll never miss out on the fun.”

“You just love seeing me get verbally tortured.”

“I think you’ve got it all wrong. I love seeing them cower in your madness. Perhaps I’ll join in.”

On their way to the Montgomery’s that very Sunday, their mother tattled away the names of the fair maidens she wanted Thomas to charm and pursue. It took every ounce of his wavering patience not to yell at her to stop. And it went on and on until the Montgomery’s estate came into view, a once familiar sight that now split his heart in two. 

“—we also need to maintain a friendly relationship with the Montgomery’s, they are our best allies,” Mother told him as Robert helped him out of the vehicle, handing him his cane. “You may as well try to win back Ellie’s heart while you’re at it.”

“I already told you, Mother,” he muttered, giving her a hard stare. “I will not do it.”

“Thomas, be practical—“

“She’s engaged, for Christ’s sake!”

“And she’s not yet married—“

“Can’t we just enjoy the lovely gossips and dinner, Mother dearest, like the reasonable adults we are?” Robert diffused the argument, smiling tightly at her, hand around Thomas’ elbow.

Like a sudden surge of courage while they were at it, Thomas professed. “If I had known your true colors, I wouldn’t have wanted a mother in the first place.”

“I’m glad your father isn’t alive to see this,” she spat, staring at him like he was more of an insult than a son. “I don’t even know who you are anymore.”

“You are the one who made me like this. You hate me, you stomp on me. I’ll return them back to you twice over, until the day you _die_.”

Mother slapped him, spun her heels with a huff, walking ahead. It smarted, Robert’s cool hand did little to ease the pain. Thomas curbed the grief dwelling deep inside him at her retreating figure, feeling incredibly thankful for his brother’s presence, there to keep him sane else he would fall apart. Lucky none of the servants and guests saw it.

Lagging a few steps behind, Robert helped him up the steps.

“Deep breaths, Tommy.”

“Thank you.”

“Are you all right?”

“I’ll survive through this Hell, at least,” he pulled a shaky smile, and his brother answered with a small one. They wore blatant lies on their faces – yes, he would not survive this dinner and Robert saw it.

Entering the ballroom, Thomas caught a few recognizable faces amongst the crowd of distinguished guests. He whispered to his brother, “Go mingle, save the family face. I’ll be fine on my own.”

“Now you see, I don’t trust that. They’ll come at you in flocks.”

“Then I’ll just have to wear my best frowning face.”

“That face looks like you want to murder someone.”

“Isn’t that half the truth?”

Robert groaned, “Fine, fine, I’ll mingle. If I ever lose my sanity talking to these clowns, I am blaming you.”

Conscious of the open stares the guests sent his way once he was alone, openly wondering why the former lover of the bride-to-be would attend this dinner, Thomas hid himself away at one corner of the ballroom where unfortunately, offered him the perfect view of the ever beautiful Elizabeth and her new fiancée. Her laughter rang softly in his memories, her smiles of varying degrees. Her cinnamon colored hair flowing down her shoulders, her blush and freckles high on her cheeks, her plump lips. Like a Queen, she welcomed her guests. Thomas dreamed that in another world, it could have been him standing there beside her, to link their arms together – proud that he was to be married to such a wonderful woman. She would look bewitching in her wedding dress.

But he remembered that day like any other, as clear and bright at the forefront of his mind, when he broke Elizabeth’s heart in the rain and left for war that would ultimately scar him for the rest of his life. Then he remembered just as clearly, the exact reason why he couldn’t love her the way she loved him. If he were to stay with her, she would never be happy, he was certain of it.

They would live a lie.

“Thomas? What on earth are you doing here?” said a voice to his left.

Sir John Franklin, Father’s dearest friend and business partner; he and his brother’s pseudo-uncle whom they deeply adored, approached him carefully like he was someone’s lost… _someone_.

He was, wasn’t he? He could have sworn he had severed any familial connection he had left with his mother.

“Did you come here alone? All by yourself? Where’s Sarah? Where’s Robbie?”

Thomas cleared his throat, putting some of his weight onto his cane. “Elizabeth invited us. And Robbie’s… somewhere, mingling with the sycophants.”

“Sycophants,” he repeated, baffled at the word. “Oh, my boy. What am I to do with you? You shouldn’t be here, you should be resting! Your mother shouldn’t have forced you to come here. Let me go look for her, where is she?”

“You don’t plan to make a huge fuss over this, do you?” Thomas worried his lip.

“And make a scene? That sounded like something Robbie would do, no?” Sir John chuckled, moving to stand in front of him and brushed away invisible lint on Thomas’ dinner jacket, fixing his collars and the lapels of his dinner jacket. He tilted Thomas’ face up so their eyes could meet, and he felt a sudden agony at the sight of Sir John’s graying hair, the added creases on his cheeks and wrinkles to his eyes and forehead. How in the world did he come to cherish someone who was more of a parent to him than his own mother?

“Tell me how many years has she treated you this poorly, Thomas? It is due time to finally have someone to fight your corner.”

“You’ve been fighting for me since the day she abandoned me,” he replied.

“I have done it out of my love for you, and I will do it again if need be. But I was not talking about me.”

Confused and bearing no definite reply, Sir John gave him a pat on the shoulder and left to find his mother. Unwilling to schmooze with petty crowd, Thomas turned to face the windows – immersing himself with the vision outside that was akin to his father’s treasured but overpriced oil painting placed in the library, Elizabeth’s two nieces and their nanny with a family of rabbits and the hedge maze donned with kaleidoscopic flowers like jewels, gleaming underneath the afternoon light.

It was mesmerizing, as if it _called_ to him.

He and Elizabeth raced through the maze once, a red string tied snugly on their little fingers, promises thrown back and forth. That was back when he thought he could love her more, and mold himself into the puppet of a person Mother wanted him to be.

When Thomas thought he was finally left alone, he heard a voice – familiar, soft and melodic, like the one that haunted his dreams months ago. 

“Thank you for coming, I hope the journey here was pleasant, at least.”

Elizabeth and her beau stood behind him, their arms linked, gracing him with their matching smiles. But there was a hint of worry lingering in Elizabeth’s eyes, telling him that she was aware of what had transpired between him and his mother, somehow.

“And thank you for the inviting me,” he mimicked their smiles, accepting Mister Cotton’s offered hand. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Mister Cotton.”

“Likewise! I’ve heard so much about you from Robert, and of course, my dear Elizabeth. I simply couldn’t pass up the opportunity to meet the legendary Thomas Jopson who saved the battle single-handedly. Vicious, I heard, with the Nordenfelt!”

“Not quite a legend, unfortunately. I am still alive,” he replied, it was a self-deprecating remark and he found himself somehow pleased with it.

“Thomas,” Elizabeth scolded him.

Mister Cotton’s smile dropped gradually, like a dejected puppy. “Well then, I’ll leave you two alone to catch up. Your presence here is indeed a great honor, Mister Jopson, I hope you do not think otherwise,” he pulled another smile, there seemed to be so many of them in store, and pecked Elizabeth’s forehead before he turned to excuse himself. “I will see you both at dinner.”

“Good man. Nice blond curls,” he commented, at Mister Cotton’s retreating figure, lost in the crowd. “He looks at you like you hung the moon and the stars. I am happy for you, incredibly happy.”

Elizabeth narrowed her eyes at him, and said, “Are you really, Thomas? Are you really happy for me? For yourself?”

“Why shouldn’t I?” Thomas asked back. “Mister Cotton is a much preferable candidate than me. The perfect son-in-law your father always wanted, who also happens to be the perfect husband material for you. I’ve made the right choice.”

“I didn’t invite you to this party so you could ridicule yourself.”

“No? What else should I do otherwise? Mother certainly thought I should be ridiculed every day.”

"Your past does not define you, Thomas. Everything that happened to you, you should not allow them to plague you any longer," she whispered, low enough that he hoped only he could hear. Her apparent concern for him was unfortunately misplaced, he felt. And she could see it clearly, he did not feel dissuaded by her. Then she implored, "Tell me, truthfully. Why did you break off our engagement?"

Suddenly, he thought, this was not the place for such a depressing topic.

Precious little things he harbored close to his heart seemed to slip through the cracks of his poorly-led life – one by one they fell and disappeared – left him bare and questioning himself. Left him torn and frail. Like a husk.

“I am not a happy man, Elizabeth, no longer the boy you knew seventeen years ago. I know you saw the real me, and I know it disgusts you. I broke our engagement for your sake, not mine. I am not trying to save myself, I only thought of you,” he quietly said. “I admit I miss our moments together. What we had were perhaps the greatest in my life, but they were simply memories now. I have no doubt that we can never be happy, I have no doubt that Mister Cotton can give you the happily ever after you always dreamed of.

“I am a weak man, and you know it. There are chaos inside here—“Thomas gestured his head and the erratic beating of his heart—“that I can’t escape from. And I wouldn’t let you fall with me.”

“You’re not unworthy of love, Thomas. I see all your imperfections perfect.”

“Imperfections are simply… imperfections,” he corrected, ducking his head to the marbled floor. “In return for my attendance here, I have one thing to ask of you.”

“What is it?”

“Please forget me, and congratulations.”

Afraid to see anymore of Elizabeth’s ever-present love for him, he suddenly felt crowded – by her, the obtrusive stares from her guests, and Mother’s spiteful presence somewhere in this room. Thomas quickly excused himself from his former lover and fled the ballroom to take a breather at the garden where he planned to hide until dinner. His fist ached from the power of his angry grip on the cane that kept him upright. Once outside, he greedily took in the scent of roses and fresh air, glad to be away from the sycophants and socialites, tempering down the stampede in his mind and his heart.

He took a seat on a stone bench, now calm again and smiled as he watched the girls hopping along with their pets, snow white bundle of clouds jumping on the grass, little noses adorably twitching. One hopped away into the labyrinth, minding its own business, and he wondered if the Montgomery’s allowed the bunnies to roam around uncaged.

Robert cleared his throat, announcing his presence and placed a glass of water before he joined him on the bench, waiting for him to speak. Come rain or shine, day or night for the past two years, Robert was always there for him.

“I told Elizabeth.”

“Mhmm.”

“She still loves me.”

“And you don’t.”

“You know I don’t, what I feel for her is a… different kind of love. And I’m envious I can never get what she’s having.”

Robert leaned back, crossing his arms and murmured to the sky, “A sore pity men like us possess a love that is hated by the so-called _civilized_ society.”

He snorted, _civilized_.

Thomas turned to his brother – his only companion in this cruel world, the one he didn’t want to lose – who raised an eyebrow at Thomas’ pause. “I worry, almost every day that I am too dependent of you, Robbie. I can’t seem to properly function without you with me. I’ve made a bad habit of taking advantage of your time.”

“Nonsense,” Robert interrupted him immediately, pinching his cheek again. “If you think you’re a burden to me, then stop it. You’re not. Never. _Non_. Life gives me you for an older brother, and I’m thrilled with what we have accomplished together, lately. We’ve wasted a lot of time, and I find myself needing you too. At times I do think you’re terribly annoying but it’s normal to think that between brothers.”

He looked into Robert’s eyes, searching for lies at the same depth of chaotic green as their mother’s, but found none. “Have we really tied up the loose ends between us?”

They only managed to repair their relationship two years ago, and it seemed somewhat whimsical to be this close to a brother he was estranged with since they were little boys. Robert thought so too, judging from how he took a moment to answer and how he rubbed the faded scar on the back of his neck.

“Almost. But I’d like to think so, yes.”

Thomas smiled, a thankful and a genuine one he felt, and said, “You’re a good man, Robbie.”

Robert groaned, shaking his head. “Wait until you hear the extent of how evil my mind goes once we get home. Then you will have to take back all the good you see in me.”

“That will never happen, I think,” Thomas said, keeping his eyes trained on his brother.

“I really hope so,” he released a long breath. “God, what a dysfunctional family we have.”

He agreed.

“I’ll head back inside, and mingle with the clowns again, _ugh_ ,” turning to the rowdy chatters of the guests at the ballroom, squeezing Thomas’ shoulder. “No need to wallow yourself in self-pity, Tommy. Remember, you don’t have to bottle up everything when you’re with me. I’ll come fetch you when it’s time for dinner, and holler for me if these rabbits decide to bite you for a late afternoon snack. They’re vicious creatures.”

“All right,” he chuckled lightly.

Alone again, Thomas closed his eyes and took deep breaths. Listening to the beat of his heart and slowly counting the numbers from one to ten, and opened his eyes to admire the beautiful scene of the garden once more. There should be a fountain at the center of the maze, he remembered loving it. Especially when the water glistened like crystals against the setting sun. Then he wondered what truly compelled him to walk without his cane, abandoning it at the bench. It was a massive struggle to limp and hop, depending his good leg and hands along the green walls for balance as he ventured into the labyrinth. As he appreciated the reds, the whites, the purples and the yellows of roses, hydrangeas, wisterias and foxgloves that sweetened the now late afternoon sky, a white ball _pelted_ pass him.

At first he thought, it was the rabbit that escaped but this one was too quick, too gigantic to be a domestic creature. And so he curiously followed, turned around the twisted corners again and again, settling on the idea that it must have been his imagination after a while. Until he stumbled on a splendidly-dressed man…

…with a pair of long rabbit’s ears, shrinking into his head of white shoulder-length hair.

“Oh, blast! Where is it? Did I drop it?”

Stunned, Thomas was confident that he was hallucinating, he didn’t get enough sleep, he didn’t eat as much food as Robert told him to as the strange man searched for something on the grass. Thomas didn’t recognize him nor see him among Elizabeth’s guests. Then he rose – _a-ha_!

In the strange rabbit-man’s hand was a golden pocket watch, jumping comically when the large hand struck twelve and it shrilled. “Dear, oh dear! I’m late, I’m very late!”

Burning with childlike curiosity, Thomas hurried to follow the strange rabbit-man as he – _it?_ – scampered away, lightning-fast, into the woods. It felt like a battle, forcing his bad leg to move as the trees went from healthy green to gray, greeted by the hollow and the dead from both sides, until an eerie cave came into view, hidden by the seemingly _moving_ foliage, stones and twigs. The rabbit-man glanced at his pocket-watch again before he ducked inside, disappearing into the darkness.

His instinct warned him not to proceed, head back to the garden and swiftly forget about everything he had seen, but curiosity overpowered his better judgment sadly. The cave _called_ for him like the garden did, so he carefully trudged inside and between the slippery rocks covered by moss and trickling water. The rabbit-man was at the other end, deeper into the hollow, popping himself down the crater on the earth, gaping open like a mouth. But what jumped out of it was a lion cub – with the strangest fur of blood red, eyes glistening blue-gray like _his_ , perching itself on the open ground.

A cub. In the forest of England.

Tail flicking, with a fiery tip.

Little nose sniffing the air.

Blue-gray eyes watching him.

Not a predator, it seemed.

But waiting.

Waiting for him.

Then it scuttled into the rift the very moment Thomas dared to move his legs. He thought Robert should reprimand him later, and that was if he could find his way back to the garden. Following the cub or the strange rabbit-man into an ominous crater was not an intelligent thing to do. Yet he scaled down the tunnel which seemed more like a rabbit-hole now, narrowing as he went, placing his feet carefully on uneven rocks. As what little light he had from the afternoon sun, everything grew darker and quieter. He couldn’t make out what he was coming to and to his absolute frustration, that same fear bubbled again.

He was not fond of the dark nor of confinement. What would happen if the earth shifted and swallowed him inside, trapping him alive in the unknown?

And like another added brush of bad luck, Thomas missed a step.

Down, down, down. He fell down, screaming.

He bobbed and floated in mid-air a few times, before gravity pulled him down again and his scream continued.

Echoing through the twisting tunnel.

Down, down, down.

Down the endless swirls and curiously floating items.

A vanity table.

Multitude of portraits, paintings and penciled-drawings.

Armors of red and black.

Gold ingots beating him like bullets.

Paper rains.

 _Ständchen_ played in repeat. A distorted, twisted version of such a lovely tune.

Deafening screeches of gears and machines, hisses of steam.

Fluttering of cards zipping around him.

Mystifying, nauseating colors and flowers.

A wide mirror.

> _For a bite of our flesh has arrived and returned,_
> 
> _Into the cradle of Wonderland where he will fall._
> 
> _Down, down into this dark, dark world._
> 
> _Wrecked by unsettledness of tears and grief,_
> 
> _The tainted shards of broken memories and heartaches are gathered complete and anew,_
> 
> _And let the singing ice break the chains that bind his bones around!_

And plummeted to the ground, ending the fall.

He was terrified at the blinding glare of a current.

Then it was too dark to see anything, too cold.

Thomas whimpered at the immense pain shooting up his lame leg, he would’ve thought he had broken his leg if the idea of being trapped inside the earth didn’t take up most of his mind. Every inch of him hurt and he shivered at the biting cold before he realized he was now at a bizarre place – with nothing above him. He pushed up to his hands and knees, puffs of cold breaths lingered and disappeared.

No tunnel, no curious items.

Nothing, but a looming door on his right. Thomas tried to turn the knob then attempted to pry it open, but to no avail. Placing his palm against the surface, the freeze sizzled his skin and he startled back. He was locked in a place he didn’t know, his fear had completely materialized. He didn’t know how in the world he was going to climb up again.

If there was ever an _up_ to begin with. Was he buried? Was this a dream? Was he hallucinating? Was he still at the garden, sitting on that bench, observing evil rabbits executing their mastermind plan to conquer the world?

There was a noise beside him, a pitched growl, the same cub was now bringing him a clear blue-green tincture. Glowing, glittering. Nudging at it with its nose, where the glass bottle rolled close enough to reach, looking at him expectantly before scurrying away and vanished into the wall. Thomas rubbed his eyes, truly believed he had gone mad.

Picking up the tincture, he stared suspiciously at it. It simply said – **DRINK ME**.

It was like a parody of the children’s book he read once before.

He sought for the alternatives, but he was truly trapped. Cold, no light. This drink could be poisoned. Swamp water. Inked.

No choice left, he tipped the tincture, and swallowed. A recurring taste of strawberry and pineapple, and a weird aftertaste of seafood that churned his stomach before a gentle warmth blossoming in his core. Like a mother's embrace. A golden key fell before him with a clack, strangely made with a twisting body carved with intricate designs and a love-shaped head. He picked up the key warily and inserted it into the keyhole with a bated breath, and turned the key. The door creaked open and blew in dusts of snow – and what welcomed him was an even stranger world.

Dark, very dark and snow.

Like a painful kick or a yank on his arm, an unknown force propelled him out into the snow

His hands burn from the cold where he toppled down. Snow danced and drifted all around him, a fantasia of dreams and reality mixed together. It took him a moment to adjust his eyes at the dark, seeing the barest outline of the crowding, dead trees, and the small mountains of snow covering the uneven ground. He rose to his feet, rubbing his hands together and cataloging his surroundings.

This was not the forest by the Montgomery's. 

“Hello?” he croaked out.

He looked for a sign of home, shelter or people and saw nothing but darkness, snow and trees. And an even darker sky.

Where in the world was this place? Summer hadn’t arrived yet, but now it was winter?

Thomas turned, wherever he came from was no longer there, and then he desperately tried to figure out which direction might lead him to just a bit of warmth for people or routes to villages or towns. And eventually, the north lured him and he curled his arms, hugging, and his body as the cold gust of wind blasted him, and prayed this was all just another bad dream.

“Where am I…?”

♚♥


	3. Into the Quagmire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **cw** : mild detail of war injuries; extreme fatigue, implied cleithrophobia (fear of being buried), implied nyctophobia (fear of darkness); blood and mild violence, corpses. 
> 
> enjoy! whoever's still reading this. unbeta'd as usual.

♚♥

Robert, finally freed from repeated questions about the progress with his family’s oil refineries, his postponed apprenticeship under Doctor Stanley and fake concerns over Thomas’ health, swirled his champagne and tipped the flute back, wincing at the delicious burn pouring down his throat. It tasted like vinegar now, he needed something stronger… especially when he spotted Mother advancing – _marching_ – with renewed intent toward him.

“Where’s your brother, dear?” she asked him gently, as if she was without guilt like any other deserving parent.

It took the life of him not to roll his eyes. “He’s outside, taking a much deserved breather from you and everyone.”

“Well, I’d like to introduce him to Lady Oswald’s daughter, Penny. Over there, that young lady in red. Pretty like a porcelain doll, don’t you think? A perfect match for our Thomas. And her parents are from the good sort also. Oh, I do wonder what it’s like to have a thriving tycoon in Singapore. Or is it in Malacca? Penang? You should ask Lord Oswald for some advice, Robbie. I think he’ll be a good mentor.”

“Let’s not stray off the topic, Mother dearest. I’ve told you before, this morning even, leave Thomas alone. You’ve got to understand that he’s still recovering, give him time. Marrying him off to a rich man’s daughter will never be your everlasting source of money, and you’re not doing great staying on his good graces. We’ve enough fortune to last us a millennia.”

“So he should stay a hermit then, being miserable and a decrepit on bed, for the rest of his life? With you spoiling him? No, I will never allow it. Enough that he’s gotten himself wrecked by the war. What will the others say? Go fetch him, tell him he’s not to embarrass me again.”

Robert bit his tongue, trying his hardest to quell down his anger. He should be shocked by her audacity but he wasn’t. “Is that all you think of him? A pawn for you to stay on your high horse, surrounded by sycophants who are interested only for your gold and silver? You are forcing your eldest son to be in an obviously loveless marriage, and you are stupidly insisting that this is the righteous thing to do. Do you really want him to hate you more than he already does?”

“How dare you raise your voice at me, Robert,” his mother hissed.

“I do wonder what Thomas did to deserve this,” he chuckled, mirthless, deprecatingly. “But I do know why, don’t I? And I know my part, in fact I care less of what happens to me once we get home, once I finally tell him our little _secret_.”

Mother clammed up, her patience thin and fury was bright in her eyes.

“I’ve long lost you as a mother, have I told you that? Consider yourself grateful you’ve only lost Thomas today. I’ve only kept up the pretense because we’re just two accomplices who are caught in a great lie. I wonder why I even bothered with you now.”

Robert jostled through the crowd, stomping his way outside where he left Thomas, deciding his brother’s presence was a much preferable company to soothe this drowning frustration. He thought dejectedly, soon he wouldn’t have this good rapport with his brother any more, best to enjoy it as much as he could.

Then when he stepped out to the garden, Thomas was nowhere to be found. Elizabeth’s nieces had bounced back inside with their nanny and the rabbits were safe in their cages, missing the white one. His brother’s cane was propped against the bench, the glass of water left untouched. Perhaps Thomas was in the maze, but he couldn’t see any moving head of black hair anywhere.

“Tommy?” he called, and waited for a good moment in the silence but it went unanswered. Worry quickly overcame him. “Thomas!”

Nothing.

No rustling sound of leaves, no chirping birds.

Quiet.

Robert hurried down cobbled steps and into the hedge maze, cursing at the darkening sky and the eerie glow it casted through the labyrinth, as if he was marching toward purgatory.

“Damn it, Thomas, where are you? Are you hurt?”

> _Down, down._

He halted at the strangest sight of a cub in blood, blood red appearing out of nowhere at the end of the path he took – a reminiscence of a long forgotten dream, almost – _inviting_ him to follow. 

> _Into the dark Wonderland._

🂾

He had suffered through countless nightmarish realities bleeding into his dreams before, caught in a quagmire of blazing fires; maniacal grins of his supposed caretakers and Mother’s abuses. But this was undoubtedly one of the worst.

Thomas established this place a wintry hell, barren from the warmth of the earth and the sun, the sky dense and gloomy. The cutting wind constantly whipped snow into his face, leeching into the threads of his dinner suit, unfortunately terrible for insulation. Puzzled at his luck, he should have dropped and froze a while ago. Why was he still walking?

This particular dream felt strange, shouldn’t he be awake soon?

But as he trudged through the fall of white, he stopped when he caught a peculiar noise amongst the trees.

From the pitch darkness came the sound of heavy limbs, dragging across the forest floor. Massive and _very_ close, most likely. It grew nearer by the second, to his left then his right and stopped, but started again farther away.

Toying with him.

Could it be…?

No, it couldn’t. It disappeared years ago.

This was a dream.

Only a ludicrous dream. 

_It_ only haunted him during his long waking hours.

Agitated and alert, he continued on, when at last he spotted a huntsman, swinging his axe down to chop a fallen tree. Thomas pondered whether he should feel relieved to have found a person albeit a stranger in this dream, or disturbed to have dreamt a moving _corpse_.

The smell was unpleasant and foul; its’ shoulders locked and movements’ mechanical, arms flailing as if both were about to drop from its sockets, and the exposed skin as black and blue as bruises. He had seen many corpses littered on battlefields, those might have prepared him for this sight, but rattled him all the same. And when the dead huntsman stilled and twitched, Thomas’ every instinct told him to run.

Run, run!

_Why can’t you run?_

Blood spewed, splattering against the white dusts of snow. Thomas stumbled back when the huntsman’s neck twisted – eyes gauged out, nose bitten off and a torn mouth with jagged rows of teeth. Then his head slithered off, hanging by mere threads of flesh, adding to the carnage.

“Are you all right, little bird?” its sneering voice distorted. “Right, right! Right! **RIGHT**!”

Thomas scrambled away when the mutilated body hurled after him, cackling at his fear. Aimless, his vision tunneled; his throat and lungs burned, old pain jarred his lame leg when it caught on a protruding root, causing him to fall on the snow. He planted himself against a tree, large enough to cover and brought his hands to silence his whimpers.

The huntsman searched for him, axe glued to its rotten hand, head suspended down its back, clicking its long tongue.

“Where are you, pretty… pretty little bird? Come here!”

This couldn’t be real.

This wasn’t real.

This was just a dream!

_Wake up_ , he demanded, one fist beating his head. _Wake up, Thomas! Wake up! Wake up!_

He jumped when the blade of the axe plunged into the tree, nicking his ear. Terrified, he pushed away but the huntsman caught his leg, razor-sharp fingers digging into his calf, hauling him through the undergrowth. “Where are you going, dearie?”

Trapped underneath the corpse with its head spat on the snow beside his own, Thomas struggled to escape. “L-Let go!”

“No, no, no, no, no, I need to live!” its teeth snapping, trying to catch his throat. “I need to live! GIVE IT TO ME!”

Dripping congealed blood from the torn neck landed on his face, Thomas screamed, arms shoving the hulking body away. He shut his eyes from the horrid sight, until a force propelled the huntsman off from him, leaving him alone – distraught – in the snow. Frantic eyes searched everywhere, finding no one with him but the swirling snow dusts. Was his dream toying with him? No blood on his face but his tears, no disturbances on the snow, no axe, no fallen tree nor chopped pieces of wood.

But the fresh dent on the tree bark, the smarting pain around his ankle and left ear told him otherwise. One advice he told himself long ago about a life as harsh as the one he went through – was that pain was a firm indication he was not dreaming.

This was not a dream.

Never a dream.

As Thomas struggled to rise on weak legs and tumbling over a few times, his foot caught on something buried underneath the snow. Not a torn root, not a stone.

But a hand, frozen.

Blackened.

Mummified.

He toppled back again, focusing his eyes as clearly as he could. Underneath the clumps of snow hid corpses; each mutilated and limbs twisted, rotting black-blue scattered like stones, open to decay. He had stumbled on a mass grave. Lurching to his side, nausea clawed at his throat and he retched out bile. His memory recognized the horrid smell of decomposing flesh, the slaughtering of his men by bullets and explosives.

_Don’t look, don’t look!_

Failing then rising again and again, Thomas managed to balance himself upright and continued walking.

Away.

He wiped his mouth with a trembling hand.

Away.

And away.

He kept moving.

If this was not a dream, then where in the world was he?

Traipsing through the thick snow and deep morass of mud, dead grass and fallen branches, he needed to secure his exact location on where exactly the tunnel had brought him to. Slowly he remembered Robert mentioning a dissertation written by one of Doctor Stanley’s moneyed patients, regarding the possible existence of inter-dimensional portals. Unknown gateways between universes, presumably parallel worlds but most likely not. They thought the poor man was simply burdened by his studies and unfortunate reliance to opium that he became terribly delusional. A crazed scholar.

_Quite a poet, utter nonsense,_ Doctor Stanley told him the day he visited the manor, setting down his tea cup on its saucer. _A common ramification to those who delve and dwell in fables, I’m afraid._

_Fables_.

He too doubted them before.

Now he wasn’t sure.

Thomas caught a glitter flying past him, like gold. Waning, disappearing, disappeared. Then another and another. Embers? He spied a bright orange flow uphill, and once he had successfully mounted through the flurry of snow, a crowd of houses greeted him at the distance.

With fire raging high, wrecking and burning down the crumbling structures.

He sped over, as fast as his legs allowed him, stumbling into the snow before he arrived, out of breath and saddened at the thought of no survivors. Disembodied voices whispering far and close welcomed him as he was rooted at the town’s entrance, staring helpless at the wreck. This blight bore a perfect resemblance of that old triptych in his father’s study and the medieval paintings nailed all over the walls of the library. With the fire burning bright and steadily, consuming the timbers, undiminished by the falling snow, giving a deadly glow to the eerie darkness. He entered the burning town, limping along the sludge of mud and snow. The setting was far too familiar as he swallowed at the lump in his throat when he spotted suspicious, similar clumps scattering the town square, blanketed by the fall of snow.

A heap of corpses, dead and frozen.

Dozens of them.

Murdered.

Some whose faces swelled out of the cold, their jaws were wide and twisted – as if screaming in agony as they died. In the same deathly manners as the ones he stumbled on earlier.

What happened to them?

And amongst the dead was a straw doll dressed in tattered fuchsia cloth. Worn and loved, it seemed. He faced a similar predicament last year before his last fight at Laing’s Nek, where its young owner was chopped and her village burned down.

“May you have peace,” he said.

Thomas brushed off the ashes from the doll’s head and placed it beside the broken entrance of a house, and ventured further. He hobbled through the still burning, abandoned town – warmed from the incessant heat when he found a solid stick to assist him in his impromptu journey. His left leg felt stiff after so long in the cold, he should find himself somewhere safe to rest and hide from the cold soon. As he thought of his plan, he heard scuttling noises up above one ruined house.

He hoped it was the red cub, but what he saw instead was a shadow of a creature, vanishing into the smoke. A spiked tail, like a dragon, rising on its hind legs.

“God, help me,” he breathed, so he left the town quickly, looking behind him every so often.

Not again, he thought.

Soon Thomas arrived to an orchard of apple trees, all of them dead and scorched black. Like a pull, he somehow remembered tending to them – nursing the broken branches; plucking its blooming white, soft red flowers, harvesting the trees’ lush and sweet, sweet produces, smelling its nectarous aromas. But for all his life, he never once visited an orchard nor did his family ever owned one. 

The memory flashed too clearly and vividly for him to consider it a dream or an imagination.

Ridden with exhaustion and parched, and dreadfully cold, he collapsed on a fallen log, needing the short rest. The tips of his fingers were turning blue, it didn’t take much to know the state of his feet. The dressing for his wounds had dirtied from the smoke of the ruined town and the mud, they needed to be changed soon or else he would succumb to infection. Life seemed to love startling him out of his wits when he heard another voice, disembodied, grumbling loud in his ear.

“I was expecting someone else when my wolves told me we had a stray wondering into this part of Wonderland," the voice echoed. Thomas struggled to rise, arming himself with his walking stick as he searched for the owner of the voice among the blackened trees. But he couldn’t spot anything in the darkness and the flurries of snow.

“Pray tell, what are you doing here all alone?”

Noticing that he was now surrounded by a pack of growling wolves, Thomas braved himself, though it might be useless. He could never outrun them. “I got lost… I wandered too far.”

“Wandered from where? Are you even from around here? You don’t look like a Wonderlander.”

Wonderlander?

He risked a glance over his shoulder when the voice stilled. There was a man with a predatory grin, lounging on a fallen log and dressed in the strangest fashion he had ever seen. Waves of golden underneath the fur of his hood, blue ink on his face almost matching the almost ghostly, gleaming color of his eyes.

Thomas could have really fallen down a doorway to an alternate universe.

“Or you’re from the sky, perhaps?” he pointed a gloved finger to the dark, dark sky, void of the stars and the moon. “Tell me, how did you fall? Is there a convenient rift on the ground somewhere that makes you pop out of thin air? Is this chance a miraculous one? Are you delicious? Can I _feed_ you to my wolves?” the wolves immediately barked, stalking much closer, black coats contrasting the white snow, but the mirth in the man’s voice and his grin both simultaneously disappeared as soon as he jumped to land on his feet, causing Thomas to drop his walking stick.

The stranger leaned his body forward, peering and gauging as if Thomas was a puzzle he couldn’t solve.

“You’re here, you made it,” he murmured, aquamarine eyes glazed, overwhelmed with wayward emotions. 

“S-Sir—“

“You’re really _here_ , is it time already?”

Time?

“Pardon me, sir, b-but I haven’t the slightest idea of what you’re referring to,” his teeth chattered, stepping back to place a good distance between them. “C-Can you tell me which way I ought to find a town from here?”

Instead, the man laughed and somehow it didn’t sound mocking. With a raise of his hand, the wolves howled and departed, leaving them alone in the crowd of dead trees. His whole demeanor, as puzzling as the rabbit-man and the red cub, changed just as quickly and the expression now worn on his face was a relieved one. “I thought you would never come, failures were expected but not like this. You’re… _real_. I’m not the best person to explain everything to you, but allow me to introduce myself.”

He spread his arms wide, “Acquaint yourself with Wonderland’s sunniest wolf, Solomon Tozer. Do call me Sol.” Then he clenched a fist to his chest, standing tall before he tipped forward slightly, bowing. “Pleased to meet you at long last, _Thomas_.”

Stunned, he responded. “How do you know my name?”

“Simply it’s the most common name, even here. There are a lot of _Thomases_ that went through this orchard,” he hummed and spun – _rolled_ away, disappearing from his line of sight and appearing behind him. Thomas started and stepped back, wary at the blatant show of _sorcery_. “But there’s only one Thomas who looked so worn with a bad leg and a familiar face.”

Thomas frowned, wracking his head to recall where in the world had he seen him. “So we’ve crossed paths recently. Where?”

Did they fight together at Laing’s Nek?

“Everywhere? I knew you since you were a boy, but I’ve only met _you_ now.”

Irritated, he huffed. “Are you one of my father’s associates then? My mother’s, perhaps? Sir John’s? My brother?”

The stranger – _Sol_ – only smiled, a soft look now gracing his formerly priggish face. “If only that were true, wouldn’t our lives be so much better? Anyway, you shouldn’t be out here all by yourself, darling. It’s not safe, thugs and murderers may come steal you away. Also, you’re not really dressed for the cold.”

Thomas glanced down at his now filthy dinner suit, he didn’t exactly plan to fall into a rabbit-hole and trapped in a wintry hell now, did he? But he admitted, he was indeed freezing. The snow had gotten into his shoes, his socks were wet and uncomfortable. It was a great wonder how he lasted this long and managed to keep himself upright in the cold.

He longed for rest and fire, and warm clothes.

He wanted to go _home_.

Home.

Would the manor still feel like home?

What about Robert?

He stopped.

Robert.

He left Robert alone.

“I need to get home, back to where I came from,” he breathed, hugging himself from the cold. “Can you help me?”

“Home?” Sol tilted his head.

“Yes. I was at an engagement party. I have to return soon, but I…” he looked everywhere, at the deadness and the strangeness of his surroundings. “I don’t know where I am. It’s too early for winter, spring has only just begun. Could I really be—”

“ _Spring_ ,” Sol tested the word, as if it was too foreign for him. “Indeed. It has been too long, hasn’t it? Wonderland had forgotten how warm she used to be.”

Curious.

Wonderland, such a peculiar name.

Thomas watched him curiously as he stalked over to a tree, twisting and plucking a lone apple hanging on a low branch and as it was freed, the tree darkened and shrunk. He offered the fruit to Thomas, who hesitated before he reached a hand to accept it. The apple’s skin was golden, and he was puzzled by the string of images flooding through him – of biting his teeth and pounding its flesh for its sweet liquid; wounds stitching itself closed, tying the apples’ white, rose flowers into garlands, placing it on top of his head.

Images… _memories_?

“I’ve been guarding this apple since night froze Wonderland. You’ll find great use of it soon,” Sol said, shrugging off his white fur coat. Thomas caught the sight of a long-bladed sword strapped on his hip, with a lion’s emblem on its pommel, and an intricate design of a heart just underneath.

Both tugged his heart, looking terrifyingly familiar.

Then a spark of lightning graced the dark sky, a ball of light falling – momentarily blinding and lighting the forest – and vanishing as soon as it appeared. 

“That’s odd, I’m fairly sure it’s supposed to be only you,” Sol draped his coat over Thomas’ shoulders, and he was immediately wrapped in warmth as he pulled it tight around him. “This should hide you. Don’t lose this.”

“Thank you.”

“Think I should thank you instead. Now—“

A howl at the distance interrupted them, and Sol cursed under his breath, his hand flew to Thomas’ elbow and brought him away, deeper into the orchard. “Listen to me very carefully, you’re not on Earth anymore. This world is called Wonderland, and we’re in the Clubs Kingdom or what’s left of it. There are eager men who will look for you, and will try to kill you.”

“Wait, wait!” he struggled to match Sol’s footsteps. “W-What do you mean Wonderland? What—“

“You’ll learn that soon, trust me. If you can’t trust me, believe my words at least. Believe _us_. But now you have to go,” Sol replied as a much larger white wolf appeared with Thomas’ walking stick in its mouth, thrusting it into Thomas’ hands. Her golden eyes gleaming at him, as if urging him to leave and be safe. “That howl is a warning, which means someone we hate is very near. Keep heading straight, I’ll hold them off for you.”

“Will I—“

“—of course you will, we’ll meet again as soon as I’ve settled our problem here,” Sol promised with a smirk, bringing his mask down to his face and pointed northward. “Mad men that direction will keep you away from trouble, go. Don’t look back.”

Thomas hurried, glancing back and saw Sol unsheathing his sword – a blade of elusive teal that shone in the dark – before he and his white wolf vanished into the falling snow. Like nothing ever happened. He forced his legs to move and bring him as far away as possible when the clashing of swords rung and shots echoed through the silence.

Far and farther he went until the howls of the wolves faded, all the noises quieted.

Until fatigue dogged his every step.

He forgot, for a short while, where he was heading to, and why. How many miles had he covered? Thomas felt nothing but dread when the copse of gaunt, blackened trees didn’t seem to break and end.

Was he lost?

Why did he believe Sol’s words? It could have been a deception, but what else should he really do?

His mind wandered then to _Wonderland_ , this world’s name. Considering the clusters of strangely dressed corpses back at the burning town and the outlandish state of the forest he arrived in, the depressing weather and the eeriness of it all, it could be true. He was certain Earth was nothing as horrific as this. The incessant pain on his leg was a constant reminder, like a ticking clock, so he knew all too well he was not dreaming. If this was even a lucid dream, then he must have underestimated his own mind.

Dangerous thing, it was.

Eventually, as his feet led him forward, the clusters of dead apple trees disappeared behind him and a gloomy meadow replaced his view. Darkness, snow and painful gusts of cold had taken away the beauty of this field, nothing lifelike was left behind, both the sky and ground melded into one.

As Thomas hobbled – good leg forward, the tip of his walking stick stabbed the snow, followed by his lame leg, again and again – he trailed a muddy, snowy pathway dented by wheels and feet when a sequence of wagons pushed by underfed horses were passing him by. Their cargoes were full of more corpses swaddled poorly in ragged threads, each wagon driven by haggard, grieving old men. Where would they bury their dead? Was it back where he stumbled?

“Hide yourself, young man,” the last coachman muttered, stopping his wagon in front of him. “You don’t want to be here.”

“I…” he stopped himself, tempering the turmoil pounding against his chest. “I need help… finding my way home. I was told to come here.”

“I can’t help you,” the coachman narrowed his eyes, shaking his head and pointed a bony finger along the road. “But there’s a village down the road. I pray luck will find you a rescuer. Soon. The Spades Soldiers are coming.”

“The Spades Soldiers…?”

“Go, they will show no mercy even to cripples like us,” the man said, and his horses trotted off. “You’ve much life on you, don’t waste it like I did.”

Thomas couldn’t find himself to be angered by the coachman’s words, something akin to shame hurt him instead.

He did waste his life, didn’t he?

Limping to where the coachman directed him to, the horrid smell of decomposing, burning flesh and war torn wheat fields alarmed him. Mothers and daughters mourned and wailed over their dead husbands, fathers, brothers and sons. Helpless young children pleaded their parents to wake, pulled away by their grieving grandparents. Skeletal men carrying stiff bodies into carts. These people were ravaged and murdered, a carnage sight so terrifyingly familiar.

_“—why can’t we save them?” Young’s voice trembled. His eyes were dull and haunted, seen too much horrors, staring listlessly at the dancing fire. “These people… they were tortured, killed. And for what?”_

Control _, Thomas thought,_ power _. Fear inducing methods would cause panic and definite submission to those who bear witness to such crimes._

_Major General Colley had sent them to scout the route ahead and what they came across, miles away, was a village overran by native pillagers. Men and women decapitated; their heads propped on sticks, no sense of compassion was given to the children as their chopped limbs strewn all over the community, huts and livestock burned and burning. This was a prime example of a conflict between clans, not cause by the ones they were fighting against. This was not their fault, not a part of their problem, they were not the catalyst._

_But Thomas wondered the same._

_Although they were simply trespassers here, why couldn’t they save these people, offer them the help when theirs never came?_

_Held in his hands was a fertility doll, colorfully beaded and clearly woven with much care and love, passed down from mothers to daughters. He had to find the owner soon, wherever her body was._

_Strong stilled, the tip of his knife digging into his unfinished carving of a lion. “We’re not gods, Davie. I don’t think we’re even saviors. We’re soldiers, pawns… fighting our own war. What happened to these villagers… we can’t avoid it.”_

_“So we should leave them to their own demise? When clearly we have the men to stop it?”_

_“What Will is trying to say, Davie, is that this isn’t our fight. We’re not the instigators. Though we are soldiers, we can’t both be here and there,” Golding said, offering the last piece of his caramel for Young, in which the boy accepted gratefully._

_Evans, still biting on that wheat straw he picked up a mile ago, smacked Young’s back none-too-gently. “This is how war always looks like. Grim, dead. Loss. Don’t let it get to you that way, where you question almost everything.”_

_“What should we do then? Leave them like this?”_

_Should they leave the corpses to be eaten by hyenas and the vultures, or to burn them?_

_“We bury them, return them to the soil. That’s the least we can do,” Thomas rose from his seat on a hollow log and retreated, away from his men, hearing them chatter quietly behind him. The doll gripped tightly in his hand as he decided he needed to take a breather._

_Perhaps, he was the most affected._

_Emotions were indeed dangerous._

_As he stood underneath the glittering stars, spared from the smell of decay and bad memories, Hammond joined him – the good marine who kept Thomas’ sanity intact as much as he could since the very moment they arrived to this country. All quiet and his silence respecting, waiting for him to conclude whatever’s brewing in his mind._

_“What would happen if we went just… a little bit quicker? We could have prevented the pillagers from slaying these people. They didn’t have to die, they’re humans still. Not to be left slaughtered like animals,” Thomas muttered, ducking his head. It wasn’t always that he confided his anxiety with anyone apart from his brother, but he only spoke what the others were thinking too._

_“Strong and Golding were sensible with their answers, I think. Not our fight, not a fault of our own. We’re not the people of this land, could they have accepted our rescue if we were to save them? To my best knowledge, they want us to leave. Yet we’re still here, pretending like we’re gods,” the marine offered, it sounded scathing but it was simply the truth as he looked down at the doll in Thomas’ hand. Both soldiers sympathized the mother and the unborn child in her womb. “The price is indeed hefty, sir. Unimaginable casualties. And we’ll just have to make do with it. We can’t tempt fate. Even in the matters of war or a conflict like this, we simply can never save everyone. Who are we but simple men?”_

_“Should we save as many as we can, then? Be it our people or them who despise us?”_

_Hammond lifted his eyes to him. “While keeping in mind of the narrative that brought us there in the first place, and accept the consequence that comes with it… yes. You mentioned it not a while ago, sir. They’re humans still. And we’re not gods, but humans like them.”_

_Thomas kept Hammond’s words close to his heart. He remembered them clearly, the very moment he opened his eyes to the butchery at Laing’s Nek. He couldn’t save his men, all five of them were dead – mutilated by fires and explosives. Severed. Parts of them missing, tossed away, disintegrated. Guilt bled into the entirety of his being._

_But some of the red coats were still standing, trying to survive out in the open._

_And so he dragged himself and aimed the Nordenfelt, mind sought out to his fallen men, and fired—_

“Yoo-hoo, down below! There, I see you!”

A young shepherd waved both arms at him from his spot uphill, his flock of sheep bleating as he continued. “What are you doing crouched in the mud like that? Are you praying? Come up! You can’t be out here!”

_Crouched_? He didn’t realize he was down on his knees, deep into the mud, hands clutching his head. His heart was pounding wildly against his chest that it hurt almost too much as the shepherd plodded over to him, helping him to stand on shaky legs but Thomas felt too stumped to move.

“We need to hide ourselves before the Spades Soldiers arrive,” the shepherd drew a troubled breath, taking pity at Thomas’ state and pulled his arm over his shoulders to begin trekking their way up to one of the houses close by.

“Peglar is my name, and I don’t think I’ve met you before. But my mind tells me you look familiar, you see? Oh, it’s all so very terrifying! First the war, and the soldiers, then the lightning! Twice! Come, come, we must not dawdle.”

Harried villagers were putting out gas lamps on the streets as they went their way, scurrying into their houses, leaving the entire village seemingly abandoned. If the warning from the old coachman didn’t worry him much, the villagers’ demeanors certainly did. And for a man as small as Peglar, he easily carried most of Thomas’ weight and hauled him inside a modest house at the far-end of the village, where he was immediately engulfed by pleasant warmth.

“You’re freezing! Sit here by the fire, make yourself comfortable. Drop your coat if you’re drenched, can’t have you ill because of this winter,” Peglar deposited him on the couch by the burning fireplace, before he went off to bar the door and windows.

“W-What about your—“

“—don’t you mind about my sheep, sweetheart, the soldiers are not interested in sentient beings walking on four legs that say _baa_ every day,” the shepherd replied, flashing him a quick smile, satisfied at his handiwork. “Let me prepare you something warm to eat.”

“You don’t have to—“

“No, no, I insist! Time draws out too long when you’re alone, and I always make too much.”

Thomas backed down, unwilling to argue when he certainly needed something to sustain himself after such a journey. He watched the shepherd marching to the side of the room that served as the kitchen, muttering things Thomas couldn’t quite understand.

He realized, unknowingly, he got himself another rescuer. Another _strange_ stranger.

“I thank you for your help.”

“Oh, not to worry! My husband would have a fit if I ignored you!” Peglar replied, chopping up something Thomas couldn’t see. “What were you doing out there anyway? It’s too dangerous to be alone in the dark now.”

He wasn’t sure of what to say and whom to trust, so he settled with what he had said to Sol. “I got lost. Thought I would find help by traveling north.”

“Well, you’re certainly right with that. But I don’t think the Hearts will ever open their gates to survivors from the Ravens. They even ignored the Diamonds’ plea for help.”

If anything, everything seemed to become much more confusing. Wonderland, and the four suits serving as its… continents? Countries? Cities? Oddly dressed villagers who were most likely oppressed by soldiers. Bizarre winter storm. The corpses, that moving corpse! The somewhat ghostly scenery which almost seemed like a twisted mimicry of a painting. The wolves, the cub. That drink. And down he fell the rabbit hole.

It was looking more like Carroll’s Wonderland by the minute.

But distorted.

Perverted by agony and torment.

Quietly he groaned at the dull ache thumping in his head.

He inspected and was relieved that his clothes were not drenched, surprisingly, with the exception of his socks and shoes, though his bandages needed to be replaced soon. Shivering still, he pulled Sol’s fur coat tight around him – like a babe’s cradle, offering him a heightened warmth to his already freezing cold.

How ghastly the cold was.

England’s winter was never this dreadful.

Thomas glanced at the gap between the wood planks that barred the window closest to him, the dying gas lights lined along the perpendicular streets in the darkness, brought strange glow to the snow.

Mesmerizing, like a thousand burning diamonds.

Incandescent, _dangerous_.

Luring him to an _old_ dream that didn’t belong to him.

“Haven’t you heard, my good man? That if you stare too long, the glares will take away your eyesight. Irreversible blindness, they say. I’ve known it to be true, I’ve seen it happen a few times,” Peglar chided, startling Thomas out of his stupor, offering him a bowl of steaming hot stew. No matter how simple and poor the ingredients were, thickened with starch it seemed, the delectable smell alone made his stomach growl. He hadn’t even touched his breakfast nor eaten his lunch before going to the Montgomery’s, and felt somewhat irked at his soaring appetite now. Of all places to be hungry.

“These snow crystals are not the ones we used to love before. Oh, how I wish Wonderland would return back to normal. Lesser of two evils, I say.”

Lesser of two evils?

Curious.

Curiouser.

“The cold is indeed strange,” Thomas began as his teeth chattered, curling his cold fingers around the bowl. “How many hours until the next sunrise?”

“What do you mean, _how many hours_? Where were you when darkness struck Wonderland? How come you don’t— _wait_. Wait! Are you not from around here?” the shepherd gasped. “The lightning gracing the sky… are you— _oh_! You’re--!”

To his absolute surprise, Peglar collapsed to his knees before him, grasping Thomas’ upper arms and stared at him with childlike beam and awe.

“You’re here… you’re finally here! Oh, it’s been so long! You look—“he stopped, agony crossed his face before it quickly disappeared. Then his eyes dropped to Thomas’ leg, noticing the unevenness of his limbs. “And hurt! What happened?”

“I-I fought a war a few months ago… caught in an explosion,” he murmured, fidgeting at the sudden burst of attention, bringing the bowl closer to his chest – like a non-existent shield between them. He didn’t quite understand what really compelled him to answer Peglar truthfully, but he found it... somewhat _easing_.

Like a burden lifted off his shoulders, however slight. 

“War,” Peglar’s bright smile dimmed a bit, hands dropped to the armrests though still boxing him to the couch. “They have wars too over there? I see there’s no certain way to avoid any of it.”

“Couldn’t say much, I-I was only a soldier.”

“Oh, how low they brought you to,” Peglar murmured low, but enough to upset the ever-growing list of confusion in Thomas’ head. The shepherd’s eyes lifted to meet his, saddened. “Allow me to be one of the firsts to say Wonderland is not how you left it.”

“B-But I’ve never been here before. You make it sound like I’m supposed to know everything.”

There was a genuine puzzlement etched on Peglar’s face. “Aren’t you supposed to?”

“I don’t even understand half of what you mean, or that man who surrounds himself with wolves. W-Wonderland is just a story from a children’s book!”

“But we are real,” Peglar tilted his head. “Didn’t Sol tell you?”

“You know him?”

“Everyone knows everyone.”

At the forefront of his mind now, was the fact that he now had two men – people who belonged to an allegedly different world, people he never met before – who seemed to know who he was, completely aware of his current dilemma.

“And me? Do you know who I am?”

“Of course,” the shepherd sat down on the floorboards, looking up at him. His smile still permanent on his face, albeit small and softer now. “I used to. Don’t you know yourself?”

That simply didn’t make any sense.

“What does that mean? You _used_ to?”

“Exactly what it meant, I used to know you,” Peglar patiently said. “My husband wrote a lot about you in his letters. A welcome news despite the circumstance. Unfortunately, Wonderland’s plight has caused my memories to become somewhat in shambles, now that you’re here… and fickle. The same goes to the rest of us.”

“ _Rest of us_? There are more of you? More people who know me?”

“Yes, so you shouldn’t worry about your safety now. Once we get you to the Boundary, I can assure you, you are very much safe over there. It’s dangerous to stay in this Kingdom any longer.”

But should he blindly put his trust on _them_? Whoever they were?

“So you’ve been expecting my arrival then? The fall down the rabbit-hole, was it planned?”

Peglar kept himself mummed, only pulling yet another infuriating smile. But Thomas pressed on, determined to get answers. “Do I know him then? Your husband. Since he wrote about me.”

“Now, no. He made himself invisible to you, he had to,” the shepherd shook his head, and quickly spotted his growing turmoil. “That is not enough of an explanation, is it?”

“Can’t you tell me more? Why are you invested on helping me?”

“I can’t answer that question.”

“Please, I… just want to return home. I’ve left my brother behind, I can’t leave him alone. I shouldn’t have gone to the party,” he screwed his eyes shut at the still blossoming headache, rubbing his temple. “I don’t know what’s happening to me… everything feels like a bad dream, but I’m awake. I know I am. First was the rabbit, then the fall. And now I’m here in a twisted translation of Carroll’s world.”

“How do you know you’re not dreaming?” Peglar’s voice sounded distant, echoing somewhat.

_Fresh dent on the tree bark._

Pain.

_The sound of heavy limbs, dragging across the forest floor._

Pain.

_It_.

Pain.

Thomas cringed. He wished he would wake the moment he opened his eyes, it distressed him that he didn’t.

“I wish I can tell you, but I couldn’t. My promise forbids me to utter even a word of it, and believe me, this is no author’s fairytale. But I can tell you something about Wonderland, if you’d like? To warn you of the possibilities of the coming tragedies,” the shepherd offered, urging Thomas to eat his stew as he rose from his seat on the floor to rummage inside an open crate, and lifted up a box full of bottled herbs and tonics.

“What tragedies?”

Thomas didn’t think he could take any more tragedies. After his father, after Laing’s Nek… he had enough of bad fortunes.

“Years ago, there was a plague that took away one-fifth of Wonderland. Shortly after, the same plague was mutated by a parasite. Said parasite ripped away her paradise gardens, her people, her beauty, causing Wonderland to become… dormant. Empty of the blue skies, the Sun and the warmth. _Dying_. She’s unable to let us heal anymore. Now, fires and deaths and injustice swarm all over the world,” Peglar returned to his seat on the floor, silently asked for Thomas’ permission to nurse his wounded leg. Hesitantly, did he allow him.

“The parasite almost found the fissure between this world and yours, you see? A lot of heroes sacrificed themselves to seal it, just so what happened here, would not happen over there,” he continued as he rolled up Thomas’ trouser leg, unwrapping the bandages carefully. “But the parasite created his own lieutenants. These lieutenants have been causing havoc, in preparation for the parasite’s return. They are without mercy, bloodthirsty, perverse. They manipulate the survivors of the Clubs Kingdom into the Spades army. They raid, they terrorize the streets, the cities. They hunt, hunting for someone. Hunting for you.”

“What do they want with me?”

“Again, I wish the answer was simple enough to tell you. I’m not the right person to, my apologies. Once you’ve supped and rested, we’ll head to the Boundary together. How fortunate it is that I’ve found you! Even if Sol isn’t here, I hope nothing happens to him,” Peglar sighed, inspecting the healing scars engraved on Thomas’ flesh. “Eat, please. It’ll help with the cold.”

Obediently he supped on his stew, his eyes distracted, following the shepherd vigilantly cleaning and gently smearing a golden tonic onto the reddened, damaged limb.

He thought of Sol then, who bought him time to escape from… someone they hated?

“The parasite’s lieutenants…” he started, after a long moment of silence as Peglar finished replacing Thomas’ bandages and the bowl had been emptied.

“Hmm?”

“They’re not aware I’m already here, are they? Is that why the Spades Soldiers are coming to this village?”

“Unless their spies had already found you before you came, then no,” but Peglar suddenly froze, eyes went wide. “Oh, I really hope not.”

Frantic rapping on the door startled them both.

As Peglar peeked into the gap between the boards to catch their unexpected visitor, Thomas placed his bowl on the floor and stood up, anxious. The shepherd let out a curse then, swiftly moving the boards and yanked in a haggard man – bleeding from his head and cradling a broken arm to his chest – into the house.

Thomas hurried over to the stranger, seating him down on the couch as Peglar replaced the boards back to secure the door. He didn’t know what to do, he was frozen at the poor sight. 

“Coombs, what happened to you?”

“The S-Spades Soldiers caught me on my way to you… they killed the others, I barely managed to escape them,” Coombs gritted his teeth in pain. “Sol saved me, but I don’t think he can hold out any longer. There are too many of them.”

“Lord,” Peglar gasped.

“John… John’s been compromised, Henry! The Heart Soldiers arrested him! They’re bringing him to the King’s court for trial soon.”

“What? B-But he’s supposed to meet up with Paladin Hodgson immediately after returning here! What did they want with him?”

Coombs shook, ducking his head. “I heard nothing but talks of a thief stealing the King’s treasure. The Patriarchs are accusing John of complicity. I hurried here as fast as I could, I don’t know much else.”

Then Peglar’s flock of sheep started to bleat again, distressed, growing louder and louder as the seconds went by. As if they were warning them. And in the midst of drawn cries, they heard the distant braying of horses.

The three of them witnessed whatever they could through the gaps of the frosted window. Towering, menacing legion of soldiers sheathed in black armors approaching the village with pointed swords, and proudly carrying a flag of a scorpion emblem. Their horses galloped up the snow dune – and like a plague they came to invade and terrorize.

Were these the Spades Soldiers?

Thomas was suddenly flooded with worry for Sol. Did he fight alone against these soldiers? Did he survive?

“Come with me!” Peglar snatched his arm and hustled him into a hidden room beside the kitchen area, pushing aside the crates and the carpet, to reveal a trapdoor on the wooden floor. The shepherd yanked the hatch open, dusts and dirt and darkness and cold greeted them altogether.

Propped against the wall beside the hatch was a beautifully made walking cane of hardwood and silver, in which Peglar handed it to him. “This cane was made for a dear friend of mine, but he passed before I could give it to him. Follow this path, it will lead you out of the tunnel. Keep heading north to the Boundary, where the snow is lighter and auroras dancing in the sky. Only then will you find a man who roams it. He can help you!”

“What is his name?” he asked, carefully climbing down the narrow steps.

“It’s been too long, I’ve forgotten his name. Trust me, he will know you too. You can’t miss his silly tall hat!”

“And you, Peglar? You said you’ll—“

“—I’m sorry, _Thomas_. Seems like I’ve to stay and lead them away from you. Do us a great favor and don’t make a sound,” he smiled again, an innocent upturn of his lips before he shut the trapdoor, locking Thomas in complete darkness.

> _Down, down into the dark Wonderland._
> 
> _You fall._

It was like a whisper, distorted, settling heavy like stone at the back of his head.

Fear started to crawl up his spine yet again, locking him to the ground but he urged himself to gather whatever courage he had left and continued on. He tried to make out where he was heading to, reaching out blindly with both hands and eventually trailing against the dirt wall, panicking at the sheer silence. It couldn’t have been that long when he heard the trapdoor creaking open again, and so he lurched to hide in a nook behind stacks of barrels and kept quiet as Peglar told him to.

Heavy footsteps and clacking armors echoed through the silence, Spades Soldiers were here. They found the trapdoor. They were looking for him. Why were they looking for him again?

“We know he’s here. Where is he?!”

“Threaten me all you want, you bastards! I will never tell you!”

That was Coombs’ voice. What about Peglar? What happened to him?

Thomas brought his trembling hands to his mouth, stopping the chattering of his teeth, halting the bubbling whimpers from escaping. He hadn’t felt this particular fear in such a long time. And when he heard the smooth sound of blade cutting through the air, a choke erupting loud and something dropped to the ground, Thomas felt his tears rolling down his cheeks.

No…

“Damn! He must have reached the Boundary by now.”

“The King will not be pleased about this when he wakes.”

“Of course he will not! What do you expect?”

“What should we say to Des Voeux? Should we lie?”

“Truth or lie, he will kill us either way!”

“But I don’t want to die!”

“Then we have to find him! Take all the villagers to the ships, interrogate them. Let Manson decide what to do with them.”

“Should we go through this tunnel?”

A moment in silence.

“Eerie.”

“We’ve wasted enough time chasing this rat. Let’s go.”

The Spades Soldiers’ booming voices faded, dragging Coombs’ body with them, leaving him alone in the darkness.

After a long while in the quiet and curbing down his fears, Thomas found it safe for him to carry on. And so he hurried along the darkened pathway, desperate to get out of the tunnel. Persistent tears continued to roll down his cheeks as he went, constantly looking over his shoulder to check what it was behind him. He couldn’t see anything but the ominous feeling remained, something was there with him.

Slow, uneven steps.

Then he heard the echoing cries of a newborn in the pitch black, followed by a woman screaming – mellow to a shriek, like she was tortured.

Thomas stumbled a few times, his knees hurt from his falls as fear tightened his muscles. But he kept moving, despite feeling as if he was dragging metals and stones. These were just the tricks his mind created, they were not real. He thought he might have been walking for hours when his fingers touched an iron ring overhead, giving the hatch a hard tug and then a shove… he was finally out of the still darkness. The travel exhausted him, his short rests certainly didn’t help. The itch from his scars and the throbbing pain down his leg weighed him down, consuming his energy.

He walked along the silver-blue path, now worn leather shoes digging into the sludge.

Where was he going again?

Boundary.

Lighter snow and auroras.

For miles he went on foot, defying basic human capability. What in the world happened to him? Was it the drink the cub gave him?

But he could feel whatever it was in his system… quickly wearing off. Back to being pathetic.

The monotony of trees and snow began to break apart when he realized his steps were becoming erratic. He was not going to make it to… wherever the Boundary was.

Then by the chance of a wandering miracle, Thomas reached a wall of floating dusts of gold, reaching up into the sky and stretched as far across as his eyes could determine, and a wide expanse of dead flowers cold and biting beneath his feet, crumbling as he passed. He tiredly guessed they must have been beautiful once.

Curious, he held out a hand, the dusts were soft, ticking his skin.

He stepped through the golden wall, slight warmth embraced him, a drastic change from the cold.

And up coloring the sky were the crowd mesmerizing auroras of chartreuse, butter and magenta – dancing and humming high above him, lighting the open scenery. Greeting him a lovely hello.

This was the Boundary, he made it.

Then he was overwhelmed by another rush of memories – of this garden being a haunting place of two lovers, and a shared promise made. Faces were blurred, scratched by misery, but the images of smiles and tears were definite and clear. Intense surge of love – conflicting his every being – overwhelmed him, so did the unknown fear and panic.

These memories were not his. He was sure of it. Whose was it?

His disorientation was then halted by the appearance of a man with a silly tall hat.

“Who are you?”

♚♥


End file.
